Marathon Training

So, here I am having notched up 16 and 18 miles. Although one slight hitch, the day after doing 18 miles, my right foot hurt. A lot! Thankfully it went after a couple of days, so I didn’t think too much about it.

It’s Easter weekend at the min and as I’m a week ahead of my plan I decided to do 11 miles as my long run. I’ve put my body through quite a lot recently and I thought the rest would do it good (I can’t believe I’m calling 11 miles a rest, what has happened to me?!). It’s a good job, as 4 miles in my right foot start to hurt again and by the time I got home it was quite painfully. I stuck some ice on it and started googling.

According to Dr Google it’s either that my laces are too tight or a stress fracture (please let it be the former). If I’m being rational about it, the laces too tight reason makes sense. I swapped trainers a few weeks ago, and 18 miles was the first long run I’ve done in my new trainers. I’ve got the exact same trainers as my previous ones, but it’s highly likely they are tighter. I’ve re-laced them, applied some ibuprofen gel to my foot. I’m going to rest all week before doing my final long run of 20 miles on Sunday.

I’m surprised I’ve managed to get this far without injury. Both times that I’ve trained for half marathons I’ve always had some niggle once I get up to about 11 miles. I think the protein shakes are serving me well. Fingers crossed my plan works. I’m so close now, only 4 weeks to.

I’m actually quite excited. The train and hotel are booked and it’s almost time to start tapering!

I received the ‘final instructions’ magazine from the London Marathon organisers this week. It made me quite emotional reading it. It’s such a huge event and I still can’t quite believe I’m going to be running a marathon, it’s just massive, particularly as I used to hate exercise!